Stephen Harper is not the first ,
and he will not be the last prime minister to manipulate the
symbols of Canadian history and alter political institutions in
order to reshape Canadian political identity. Chrétien was accused
of just such a manipulation during the sponsorship scandal of the
1990s and, before Chrétien, Trudeau fundamentally altered our
institutions and identities through the Constitution Act and the
Charter of Rights and Freedoms. After 1982, gone were historic
pillars of Canadian political identity such as the supremacy of
parliament and British-style “implicit” rights protections.
Canadians became the bearers of codified individual rights, and
provinces, including Québec, became bound by the policy-based
decisions of a philosophically-minded Supreme Court. So profound
were the changes brought about by Trudeau’s efforts that subsequent
attempts to alter his constitutional reforms by reclaiming some of
the provincial powers lost in 1982 failed, perhaps less because of
the substance than the style of the revisions proposed in the Meech
Lake and Charlottetown Accords. Canadians became attached to
“their” constitution and cynical about their political élites.
Their new political identity became a juggernaut which no political
party or leader has dared to challenge since.

Whereas there is nothing new about prime ministers or, for that
matter, premiers, attempting to redefine and reorient Canadian
identity to reflect their vision of the country, Harper’s efforts
over the past decade are different from those of past prime
ministers, not because of the extent of this reshaping, nor because
he shapes us from a Conservative rather than Liberal direction, but
because, as several commentators have suggested, he shapes us
without a vision of Canada or an ideal of citizenship worthy of
allegiance at all. On some accounts, changes to Canada’s symbolic
identity – reflected in the images found in our new passports, in
recent attempts to insert the monarchy back into our military and
to use military heroism to punctuate our historical narrative –
portray Canada nostalgically, simplified and united around images
and events that speak more clearly to the roles of men than women,
and to the roles of the dominant white settlers and explorers
rather than the struggles of Indigenous people or ethnocultural
minority immigrants. As Yasmeen Abu-Laban points out, the reality
of Canadian diversity, represented so well by Bill Reid’s famous
sculpture, Spirit of Haida Gwaii, which graced our
now-retired $20 bill, is flattened and rendered homogenous. And,
with respect to Québec, Harper’s seemingly contradictory policies,
as described by Reg Whitaker, have consistency perhaps only when
viewed as strategies meant to isolate the French fact of Canada
from the whole, thereby leaving to Québec the task of sorting out
its place in Canada unimpeded by concerns Ottawa once had for
national unity.

Some commentators suspect that the only vision informing
Harper’s legacy is one meant to make Canadians and Canadian
institutions easier to govern by the pmo . In this
regard, three key changes introduced by the Harper government to
the way in which Canadians are governed seem designed to silence
dissent. First, by eliminating the long-form census, the
Conservatives have weakened the capacity of public interest
organizations to defend the interests of vulnerable and
marginalized people. Second, by de-funding and under-utilizing
scholarly expertise, the project of governance is disconnected from
the requirement that public decision-making be based on good
evidence and argument rather than party ideology or current
prejudice. And, third, by manipulating the rules and conventions of
parliamentary governance, the government undermines democratic
norms of transparency and accountability, furthering weakening the
voice of opposition and the norms of accountability in
Parliament.

Perhaps the clearest message emerging from these commentaries is
that Canadians are increasingly powerless in the face of these
recent changes. But are these changes any more fundamental than
those made by previous governments? I think they are not and that
it’s worth considering the ways in which Canadian governance is not
monolithic or so easily manipulated. External sources of power and
influence such as the judiciary, provincial governments, the
international community, and even the Senate, have the capacities
to “push back,” to provide an alternative vision of the
country...

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